Entertainment
Adidas Cancels Ye and Ends a 10 Year Partnership
Adidas has cancelled its partnership with rap artist Ye formerly known as Kanye West, saying it couldn’t survive a growing backlash over the rapper’s racist and antisemitic remarks.
The breakup will leave Adidas looking for another transcendent personality to help it compete with ever-larger rival Nike, but it will certainly cost Ye, as the rapper is now known, even more. The footwear business is the latest to cut relations with Ye, whose music career has dwindled as he courted controversy.
Adidas estimated that the move to halt production of its Yeezy line and discontinue payments to Ye and his firms would cost them up to 250 million euros ($246 million) in net income this year. Its stock dropped more than 2% on Tuesday.
“Adidas does not allow antisemitism or any other type of hate speech,” a spokesperson said in a statement released Tuesday. “Ye’s recent words and actions are reprehensible, hostile, and dangerous, and they go against Adidas values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and justice.”
For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic remarks in interviews and on social media, including a tweet earlier this month declaring that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” a reference to the United States defence preparedness state scale known as DEFCON.
He was barred from using Twitter and Instagram.
Ye expressed regret in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that was broadcast online Monday, describing his initial tweet as a mistake and apologizing to “the Jewish community.” An email sent to a Ye spokesman was not immediately responded to.
Despite prior problems involving his comments about slavery and COVID-19 vaccines, Adidas has stood by Ye. However, Ye’s antisemitic remarks resurrected the company’s own ties to the Nazi system, which it had tried hard to break. During WWII, Adidas facilities “manufactured supplies and weaponry for the Nazi regime, using slave labour,” according to the World Jewish Congress.
Jewish organizations said the decision to eliminate Ye was long overdue.
“I would have liked a clear statement earlier from a German corporation that was also involved with the Nazi government,” said Josef Schuster, President and head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, the country’s main Jewish organization.
Adidas, whose CEO Kasper Rorsted is retiring next year, said it decided following a “thorough evaluation” of its association with Ye, whose talent agency, CAA, and fashion company Balenciaga had already dumped the rapper.
Some Adidas employees in the United States have expressed on social media the company’s silence in the hours leading up to the announcement. Despite the rising backlash, Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing firm Metaforce, feels Adidas’ delay was “understandable.”
“The benefits are enormous in terms of the demographic it appeals to — younger, urban, trendsetters, and the size of the business,” Adamson said. “I’m sure they hoped against hope that he’d apologize and try to make things right.”
According to Morningstar analyst David Swartz in a Tuesday report, the impact of Yeezy sales will be greater than projected because the brand has discontinued production of all Yeezy products and ceased royalty payments.
Swartz forecasts Adidas revenues of $23.2 billion euros ($23.1 billion) this year, with the Yeezy brand accounting for 1.5 billion to 2 billion euros ($1.99 billion), or roughly 10% of the total. According to Swartz, the expensive brand accounts for up to 15% of the company’s net income.
According to Forbes, Adidas accounted for $1.5 billion of Ye’s net worth, which will drop to $400 million without the transaction, which includes his music catalogue, real estate, cash, and a share in ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s shapewear firm Skims.
Despite the rapper’s long-held belief that the magazine grossly undervalues his fortune, Forbes has announced that it will no longer include Ye on its list of billionaires.
In recent years, Ye has alienated even his most fervent followers. After the couple’s acrimonious divorce and disturbing posts about her subsequent connection with comedian Pete Davidson, everyone close to him, including Kardashian and her family, has stopped openly defending him.
Many Ye fans have been disappointed, according to Carl Lamarre, Billboard’s deputy director of R&B/Hip Hop, but the implosion of his commercial ventures has been painful to witness for those who appreciated the rapper’s ability to reach new heights of success outside of hip-hop.
“This is someone who might perhaps lay down the pattern for many next performers,” Lamarre added. “When you see someone graduate to his level of superstardom and transcend into business, into fashion, and touches that billionaire point, that’s tremendously aspirational for our community, for hip-hop, for African Americans.”
“But the same students, including myself, who were previously huge supporters, you want to defend him, but every day he gives you a reason not to,” Lamarre remarked.
The 24-time Grammy winner has been progressively losing his radio audience, and his streaming figures have also dropped marginally in the last month.
His airplay audience has dropped from 8 million in the week ending Sept. 22 to 5.4 million in the week ending Oct. 20, according to statistics provided by Luminate, an entertainment data and insights company whose data fuels the Billboard music charts.
During the same time period, the popularity of his tracks on streaming on-demand fell from 97 million to 88.2 million, a 9% decrease.
Since 2016, when Ye was hospitalized in Los Angeles for what his team described as stress and tiredness, Ye has gained a reputation for stirring up trouble. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; it was later revealed.
He has stated that slavery was a choice and referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as the “mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, during Paris Fashion Week, Ye was slammed by the woke on Twitter for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to the show and dressing models in the same style.
Ye attempted to buy Parler, a conservative social network with no gatekeeper, after being suspended from Twitter and Facebook.
On Tuesday, the fashion, music, and garment industries distanced themselves from Ye.
Foot Locker announced a break with the Yeezy brand and the removal of Yeezy Adidas sneakers from its shelves and online sites.
Gap has stated that it will remove Yeezy Gap merchandise from its stores and close yeezygap.com.
According to Universal Music Group, which owns the Def Jam label, Ye’s music and merchandise contracts expired last year. The MRC studio stated on Monday that it is cancelling a full documentary about the rapper.
A Vogue representative stated on Tuesday that the magazine and its global editorial director, Anna Wintour, have no plans to work with Ye again after his recent controversial words and behaviour.
Jewish organizations have warned about the rapper’s remarks, which come from growing antisemitism. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who hailed Adidas’ decision to drop Ye on Tuesday, claimed his group had documented a tripling of anti-Jewish harassment, vandalism, or violence since 2015.
“We are currently dealing in a context where antisemitism is empirically on the rise,” Greenblatt added. “When people with significant platforms give antisemitism and other forms of bigotry license, it creates an environment in which these kinds of acts have a degree of permission they might not have had previously.”
Lamarre stated that he recognized Ye’s mental health and personal concerns but that it is even more necessary to halt and evaluate providing him with a platform for his hateful words.
